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Why do founders leave after their companies are acquired? There are many nuanced answers, but in the short and medium term, it’s incentives. Acquirers use 3 incentives to get founders to stay: Sticks. If you leave, you lose X% of the consideration. Acquirers try to put 30%-40% of the founders’ consideration at risk, if they can get away with it. This sort of works, but it leads to “rest-and-vest” behavior if not thoughtfully combined with Carrots (next point).
What drives the acquisition market of startups? It’s the big deals. In the last decade, the total number of venture backed software M&A by count has remained relatively constant. The black line shows the linear trend across US venture backed companies with disclosed values of $50m or more. The average & median counts by year total 58 & 55 respectively.
Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Azure Report - Cloud Infra Looks Good! Microsoft kicked off earnings season with a bang! For software, all eyes were on Azure - which grew 31% YoY (ahead of expectations closer to 29%). What was arguably more impressive (and a better indicator of what’s to come for the rest of infrastructure software than overall Azure growth) was the Azure growth excluding
Andy Meadows, the Head of Partner Success at Payrix joins host Ian Hillis to continue their conversation about building a successful Embedded Payments strategy. As the last episode of a four-part series on the topic, Andy and Ian tackle how software companies can minimize attrition and why it’s important to the payments conversation. Did you miss Parts 1-3?
Speaker: Alex Salazar, CEO & Co-Founder @ Arcade | Nate Barbettini, Founding Engineer @ Arcade | Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO @ Aggregage
If AI agents are going to deliver ROI, they need to move beyond chat and actually do things. But, turning a model into a reliable, secure workflow agent isn’t as simple as plugging in an API. In this new webinar, Alex Salazar and Nate Barbettini will break down the emerging AI architecture that makes action possible, and how it differs from traditional integration approaches.
Ready to join the leading conference for B2B SaaS founders, operators and investors from pre-seed to series C? If so, join FastSpring at SaaStock USA 2024 at Booth S5! We’d love to talk with you in person! Join us at the Palmer Events Center, in Austin, TX, from May 13th to 15th, for an extraordinary event dedicated to all things SaaS. Since 2016, SaaStock has helped more founders, investors, and operators connect, learn, and grow than any other SaaS conference globally.
I am pleased to announce that we have just raised $7.2B for the following venture strategies: American Dynamism ($600M), Apps ($1B), Games ($600M), Infrastructure ($1.25B), and Growth ($3.75B). This marks an important milestone for us. When Marc and I started the firm in 2009, the conventional wisdom in Venture Capital was that in any given year, only 15 companies would ever generate $100M in revenue and those 15 companies would drive almost all of VC returns.
I am pleased to announce that we have just raised $7.2B for the following venture strategies: American Dynamism ($600M), Apps ($1B), Games ($600M), Infrastructure ($1.25B), and Growth ($3.75B). This marks an important milestone for us. When Marc and I started the firm in 2009, the conventional wisdom in Venture Capital was that in any given year, only 15 companies would ever generate $100M in revenue and those 15 companies would drive almost all of VC returns.
So as growth decelerated rapidly for many in SaaS in 2022-2023, one of the first things cut was marketing. It’s not always ideal, but I get it. It’s a variable cost. Cut marketing, you’re often cutting future growth. But it’s a “simple” place to cut to at least stabilize the ship and survive to fight another day.
Amazon announced their earnings yesterday. Like Microsoft & Google, Amazon’s Web Service business is seeing a surge of growth, up from 13% annual to 17% annual growth (16% when excluding the leap year). Aside from the overall growth of these clouds increasing, the massive investment in CapEx data centers, power plants, and GPUs is stunning.
Q4 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. The 62 companies that I’ll discuss here (which is not an exhaustive list, but is still comprehensive) all reported quarterly earnings sometime between Jan 24th – March 27th. In this post, I’ll take a data-driven approach in evaluating the overall group’s performance, and highlight individual standouts along the way.
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
Offering a frictionless checkout experience is essential for digital transaction conversion rates. Today, we’re excited to announce new payment method improvements available on the FastSpring platform: Apple Pay Pix Preferred Payment Method Apple Pay: Seamless Transactions Within the Apple Ecosystem As Apple Pay adoption continues to grow, incorporating Apple Pay into payment options becomes an essential part of your digital strategy.
It’s an exciting, relieving, high-anticipation day for all of us at SparkToro. Today’s launch—which we call “V2″—is the culmination of more than a year of work, including a complete rebuild of the infrastructure and data sources for our product.
So just a little while back, Lenny Rachintsky had me on his hyper-popular podcast to talk about scaling sales, from the perspective of a founder who hasn’t really done sales. It ended up being super popular, and a fresh take on a lot of topic we talk about a lot on SaaStr. I still regularly get emails about it, and the full deep dive is above.
In “Do software companies actually have good margins?”, Benn Stancil makes a case for a counterintuitive point : Software companies are much less profitable than they might seem. Why? Because the research & development costs associated with software should be part of their cost of goods sold. Software companies don’t invest once in R&D & then sell copies of the software as we did in the 90s on CDs.
Speaker: Pete Uselman, Director of Partner Experience at Wind River Payments
Most integrated payments providers share a percent of the payment revenue with their software partners. But, oftentimes, that revenue share is only a fraction of the true income potential software providers can realize. If you want to maximize income opportunities from your payments program, check out Wind River Payments’ webinar-on-demand.
Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Hype Rounds vs Fundamental Rounds The show Silicon Valley is one of my favorites - just so many nuggets of humor in that show. A favorite clip of mine is when Russ Hanneman is talking about how pre-revenue businesses are the best kind of businesses.
For those embarking on a website migration, keep in mind the importance of meticulous planning coupled with flexibility and constant communication with stakeholders. This will let your migration unlock new potential and achieve unparalleled growth.
As an experienced sales and GTM leader, John Eitel has more than witnessed how product-led growth (PLG) has affected the tech and SaaS space in the last few years — he and his teams have been up close and personal with how PLG increased in popularity as a sales strategy. “I think there was a time of, ‘ Everybody should be doing it; why aren’t you doing it?
In the heart of Austin, where the vibrant culture and musical heritage intersect, lies a celebration that resonates with the soul of the city—the Austin Blues Festival starting April 27 and running through April 28, 2024. As the city gears up for another unforgettable gathering of music enthusiasts and performers, one name stands out as a beacon of support: Usio Akimbo.
For SaaS businesses, improving retention is one of the easiest and most effective ways to drive revenue and profits. With a clear link between failed payments and customer churn, having a robust failed payment recovery solution isn’t optional—it’s essential. Achieving your retention goals starts with the right solution.
Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 5 Things I Should Know Before Starting a SaaS Startup? My Top 5: It will take you at least 24 months to really get anywhere. Everyone mentally budgets 10–12 months. It’s never enough. At least, not to get enough paying customers from Code Zero. A little more here: [link] A co-founder not equally committed will blow up on you, and best case, is a disaster you will have to clean up later.
Snowflake announced Artic , their open 17b model. The LLM perfomance chart is replete with new offerings in just a few weeks. Overall knowledge performance is asymptoting as expected. It’s hard to discern the most recent dots. One thing stands out from the announcement - the positioning of the model. “The Best LLM for Enterprise AI” Snowflake focuses on the model’s enterprise performance : SQL generation, code completion, & logic.
Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Rubrik IPO Update This week Rubrik launched their IPO with an initial pricing range of $28 - $31 / share. This range represents roughly a $6B valuation at the midpoint ($29.50 / share), with a ~6.5x NTM revenue multiple.
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Simplify omnichannel payments with a solution that unifies every channel through your platform. By integrating front-end systems like online, mobile, and in-store payments with robust back-end infrastructure, you can deliver a seamless payments experience without the need for heavy engineering. Omnitoken technology enhances security by tokenizing card transactions for reuse, enabling merchants to drive cross-selling opportunities.
Ready for an immersive exploration of the pressing real-world challenges confronting the gaming industry? If so, join FastSpring at GamesBeat Summit 2024! We’d love to talk with you in person! Join us at the Marina del Rey Marriott, in Los Angeles, CA, on May 20th and 21st, for an extraordinary event dedicated to all things video gaming. This year’s theme is Resilience and Adaptation, where we will all delve into the strategies needed to adapt and thrive.
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Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now March Inflation (CPI) Update CPI: March CPI YoY was +3.5% vs expectations of +3.4% (and +3.2% in February) March CPI MoM +0.4% vs expectations of +0.3% (and +0.4% in February) March Core CPI (ex Food/Energy) YoY +3.8% vs expectations of +3.7% (and +3.8% in February) March Core CPI (ex Food/Energy) MoM +0.4% vs expectations of +0.3% (and +0.4% in February) We̵
Unlock the secrets of SERP dominance in 2024 with Tom Capper. Discover the evolving landscape of position one rankings and seize the opportunities amidst shifting trends in SEO.
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